“She is having her tea. She left me in the nursery, and said she should soon be back. I came down-stairs to go into the garden, and then I saw the door open, and the books, and I came in to look. I like a library; I always used”—but here the look of bewilderment swept over the boy’s face again, and he concluded, confusedly, “I mean, nobody was there, and it all looked nice and quiet, and so I came in and sat there, and then you came back, and I thought—”
“Never mind, never mind what you thought,” interposed the Squire, hastily, for the look in the child’s eyes was painfully bewildered and strained. “Tell me if you know who I am.”
“You are the Squire,” answered Bertie, promptly, looking more natural and childlike again. “I saw you ride out on your big brown horse to-day; and yesterday I saw you walking in the garden and telling the men what to do. Mrs. Pritchard says that all this big house belongs to you. Are you ever lonely living here all by yourself?”
The Squire looked down into the child’s upturned face, and a curious shade passed over his own.
“What do you know about being lonely?” he asked, in an odd, muffled voice.
Bertie put his hand over his eyes; and then, after a moment’s pause, looked up again smiling.
“I was lonely down by the sea with David. He was very kind, and I liked him, and so was his mother. But I was lonely with them. It isn’t half so lonely here with you.”
“You are not lonely, then, with Mrs. Pritchard in the nursery, I suppose?”
Bertie hesitated.
“Mrs. Pritchard is very kind,” he said, with a little courtly air that was almost amusing,—“very kind indeed; but, somehow, this feels more natural, you know.”